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Contents

History

Madison is a mermaid who twice saves her childhood love, Allen Bauer, from drowning. After kissing him, she dives into the sea and leaves Allen to return home.

Madison finds Al's wallet and shows it to the police who arrest her for Public Nudity. She later has a romantic relationship with Al. However Madison is publicly revealed to be a mermaid when she is splashed by Walter Kornbluth outside a restaurant, and is summarily captured by scientists. At first Al avoids her, in shock that his beloved was a mermaid, but later he rescues her from the lab with the help of his brother Freddie and Kornbluth himself, because the former helps him to realize that he still loves her. They then escape the authorities by jumping into the bay, for mermaids have the special power to enable those close to them to breathe underwater. Al joins Madison in the underwater world, even though she tells him that he can never return to the human world. However, years later, they find it necessary to return to dry land for a while, as Allen becomes bored on their deserted island hideaway and admits he misses life in New York City and his brother Freddie.

Personality

Madison is the archetypal fish-out-of-water in the most literal sense. Based upon Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid (albeit 8 years older than his original character), she is the forerunner to that especially-famous Disney Princess: Ariel; innocently curious about the human world and prone to fall in love with the first man she saves from drowning. Like Giselle two decades prior to Enchanted, she finds herself in the city which supposedly has no happy endings: New York. This city provides the backdrop to Madison's angst, her drama, and her many comedic contributions to the already-quite-humorous story. Out of innocence and necessity, she at first enters New York naked and then wearing Allen's clothes. She then gets said Allen into a number of awkward little situations as she is excited by everything she encounters, and names herself after Madison Avenue. She cries while watching "Bonanza" on television, thinking that a man shooting another man on-screen is in fact a real murder, and then receives a gift offered by Allen under the assumption that the package itself is the extent of the gift. She later is at a fancy restaurant and reveals that mermaids are not accustomed to cutlery....

Still, what endears the audience to Madison as a character is not that her deeds are done with ignorance, but that they are done with innocence. She is as likely to express herself by kissing as by speaking, swift to forgive even those who do the most horrible things to her, courageous in a preciously-gentle manner, and seems to be most motivated by love. As a very clever move on the part of the filmmakers, Madison is the only representative of merfolk in the movie and is thus a sort of goodwill ambassador. In the aquatic realm of the final film, there is no sea-witch, no petty political backbiting, nothing to convince the viewer that merfolk are merely humans with fins. Madison is so beautiful a being as to seem ethereal (and the film's lighting at times emphasizes this), and thus we are invited to view her world with the same childlike wonder with which she views ours; it is almost like having "the Little Flower of Jesus" (Saint Theresa of Lisieux) as one's only exposure to France. Thus, when we see her descend into the dark depths with Allen in tow, the latter having lost his home and his family, we can nevertheless expect that he will live happily ever after (until the sequel). We just can't see how a world which values such wonderful things could be bad.

Abilities

Splash!

In her first appearance, Madison exhibits a number of superhuman abilities due to her being a mermaid. These include:

Mermaid Tail: Madison can swim faster and more efficiently than even a military man in scuba gear, and can use her tail to evade hazards in the water. This power is listed as "mermaid tail" rather than "mermaid swimming" because it was granted to Daryl Hannah in real life for as long as she wore her tail in the water. The mermaid tail is a prosthetic which included a built-in monofin, enabling Daryl to swim faster than a human wearing individual swim fins, and in recent years tails of equal quality have become available to professional (performing) mermaids.

Water Breathing: In mermaid form, Madison can breathe water as well as air and can thus remain submerged indefinitely.

Vocal Modulation: Madison's real name is a sound so high-pitched that it can shatter glass, which suggest that her natural speech patterns are much like those of the bottle-nosed dolphin (though it is unknown whether she can speak with them or other cetacean non-human persons). Nevertheless, she can also speak human dialects with ease and even possesses a limited ability to read and speak English (which she enhances by imitating what she sees on television).

Mermaid Kiss: Madison's kiss bestows the ability to breathe underwater, so long as the recipient remains in fairly close proximity to her. She gives this kiss freely to those people (and objects) for which she has affection, but the resulting water breathing ability is only bestowed if the kiss is delivered underwater while Madison is in full mermaid form.

Mermaid Metamorphosis: Due to her human half being the dominant characteristic, Madison may at times transform into a full human being. Doing this requires her entire body to have been out of the water long enough to have completely dried off, at which point it will transform into a pair of human legs. However, Madison's connection to the sea means that she must transform back into a mermaid once every 24 hours (though this was only specifically stated in a deleted scene involving Madison's meeting with the sea witch), which is accomplished by bathing her legs in salt water. Additionally, despite the convenience of being able to assume both human and mermaid forms, the transformation is not consciously voluntary; merely splashing Madison with a sufficient quantity of water will cause her legs to instinctively be drawn together by muscular spasms and revert to a mermaid tail.

Madison displays new abilities in the second movie. She lost some of these because of her first transformation into a human. These include:

Aquatic creature communication: Madison can communicate with cetaceans like dolphins. Dolphins would swim with and play with her and a dolphin can recognize her as a mermaid even in human form.

Water sensing: No matter where she is or how far from the ocean she is, Madison can always sense which direction the sea is in and find her way back to her element.

Water visions: By running her finger in a circular motion over water, Madison can create windows that allow her to see anyone anywhere in the world. She can also communicate with people via these windows though the other person will only be able to hear her and not see her. Madison only just got back this ability in the second movie as she lost it after her first human transformation.

Gallery

Madison swims to retrieve Allen's wallet.

Madison swims through a coral reef.

Madison is spotted by Doctor Kornbluth.

Madison approaches the sunken ship.

A passing sea turtle briefly distracts Madison from her research of old maps.

Satisfied, Madison swims away from the sunken ship.

Partially immersed in the bathtub, Madison's legs begin to transform into her mermaid tail.

Madison's scales begin to become visible due to what appears to be a vacuum effect.

The transition continues.

Her legs now fully fused together in a mermaid tail, Madison stretches a ventral fin.

Madison relaxes privately in the bathtub.

Madison flips out of the water after Allen discovers her.

"Could you make some pancakes?" Madison tries to stall Allen as she desperately dries her tail before he can see it.

"I have a present for you!" (Note how Allen always kept his apartment festooned with aquatic reminders.)

The present in question: a park statue set up for demolition...which expresses a theme which they both appreciate....

Why the dinglehopper/fork is a foreign object to merfolk.

Splashed by Dr. Kornbluth, Madison's legs are forced together by muscular spasms as she transforms.

"BEHOLD THE MERMAID!"

Captured!

Allen, who was also taken by the government scientists, does not transform into a merman, so Madison is introduced to his tank.

Madison rejected by Allen, who insists that he "is not a fish!"

Madison's tail does not respond well to captivity and despair, and it begins to flake.

Madison and Doctor Walter Kornbluth gaze at one another as the latter realizes what he has done.